This is the story of Ruth Juras' escape from the Holocaust. However, the word escape is entirely inadequate to convey her experience, given all that she lost and left behind and all the pain that she suffered in its wake. Ruth was born in Berlin in 1920, shortly after the Great War, as shown in the following family tree. Leopold Sara Leopold Bertha Judas Joseph Joseph1 Lewin └───────┬───────┘ └────────┬───────┘ Willy │ ┌───────────────Julius (M. Emelie) │ │ ┌──────Moritz (M. Johanna) Ida (M. Herman Sternheim)─┐ │ │ ┌─Hedwig (M. Alex Lewi) Benno (M. Herta)──┐ │ │ │ │ Herman Judas '85 Selma Joseph '88 │ │ │ │ │ [Vandsburg,Poland] [Labishin,Poland] │ │ Werner │ │ └───────────┬─────────┘ │ │ Ann Walter Thea │ │ │ Edith Margot Arno Ruth Juras,'20 Brigitte Heinz [Berlin] Her grandparents and parents were born in what was in the 1930's, and is now, Poland, in the vicinity of the city of Poznan. In their early lifetime Poznan was part of Prussia, known in German as Posen. (The entire province was known as Posen, as well as its capital, the city of Posen.) This was to be fateful for her parents, as the narrative will point out later. The Judases' and Josephs' move to Berlin, a distance of about 150 miles, Leopold Judas, Ruth’s was typical in that period for gentiles and Jews alike. paternal grandfather. Berlin was the Prussian focus for a great in-migration, as industry, business and commerce expanded in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Just prior to the turn of the century Berlin's population was almost 1.9 million, of whom about 92,000 were Jews who comprised almost five percent of the total. Like the Judases and Josephs (who, while in Posen, were German-speaking residents of the province living alongside ethnic Poles who were 1 maintaining the Polish language and culture), many of Berlin's Jews came from the province of Posen seeking not only improved economic opportunity but also greater personal freedom (both religiously and culturally), greater social acceptance and enhanced upward mobility for themselves and their offspring. Thus, whereas the Jewish population of Posen was i Sara Joseph Judas, Ruth’s 62,000 in 1871, it had fallen to 30,000 by 1905. paternal grandmother, who died in childbirth bearing Ruth’s Uncle Willy. Ruth's parents were married in Berlin in 1914, and their first child, Edith, was born in 1915. However, she lived only until the age of two. Ruth's father Herman was conscripted into the German Army very shortly after the commencement of the Great War. He was sent to the eastern front where he was captured by the Russians in 1916, and he remained a prisoner of war until the end of hostilities. He returned home with the rank of corporal and the recollection of the Kaiser's war-time assurance: "Der Dank das 2 Vaterlandes ist euch gewiss". This photo, with Herman at the far left, was taken at the front just before the Brusilov campaign, in which Herman was taken prisoner by the Russians. 1 The Josephs on both sides of the family were unrelated. 2 “Know that you have the gratitude of the Fatherland.” 2 Ruth's birth on December 4, 1920, inaugurated a period of happiness and modest prosperity for the family, in spite of the critical economic situation of the post-war Weimar Republic. Ruth's maternal grandparents were relatively well-off, although they were not wealthy. They maintained a successful dry-goods manufacturing and distribution business, On the well-known Unter den Linden, shortly after Ruth’s birth supplying men's and boy's clothing and had them cut in their large Berlin apartment, sending the work-in-process to sewing contractors for finishing and shipment. The sales activity for the firm was also centered in the apartment. So successful was the firm that the Josephs saw fit to set up their son-in-law Herman (Ruth's father) in a similar venture. In 1923, Herman had the family's surname legally changed from Judas to Juras. (His brothers did likewise.) This decision stemmed from the desire to assimilate further and more easily into German society (for business and more general reasons) as well as to avoid whatever subtle or explicit anti- semitism that might be targeted at such an 3 obviously Jewish name. Herman, Selma and Ruth in 1923 3 The aftermath of the Great War was accompanied by intense political turmoil which included numerous incidents of anti-Semitism. In 1922, the prominent Jewish industrialist, Walter Rathenau, was assassinated while serving in the Weimar Cabinet. 3 The Jurases were able to attain a middle- class level of prosperity by the late 1920's. This was not an insignificant achievement, given the political and economic upheaval of the immediate post-war period. However, the Ruth and Selma (front row, far left) on vacation at Bad Flinsberg, 1929 Jurases' dry-goods manufacturing business provided important necessities and, given the way the business was organized, was able to respond to the ups and downs of the economy without excessive hardship. The Jurases lived in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood in Berlin near Alexanderplatz. Until 1931 or 1932 they lived at 9 Wadzeckstrasse, after which they moved to a larger apartment at 21 Hirtenstrasse. For Ruth's primary education she was enrolled in a Jewish public school near Kaiserstrasse. The German governmental educational policy provided public funds for both Jewish and non-Jewish schools. In this environment she received an introduction to her Jewish heritage and traditions along with her secular education. However, in 1930, at the age of 10, she applied to the Sophien Lyceeum, a private gymnasium for girls on Weinmeisterstrasse, where she was tested and accepted. To gain higher education in Germany in those days required attendance at a gymnasium, and this school was considered by the family to be a step up and had affordable tuition, so Ruth was registered. The student body was overwhelmingly gentile, with Jewish students accounting for only about ten percent of enrollment. Since no traditional Jewish subjects were taught, Ruth also began attending a supplementary Hebrew School under the auspices of Ruth with her parents 4 (toward the upper left) at a resort in the Hartz Mountains, 1928. The family outings indicated material comfort in spite of the hard times. the Oranienburgerstrasse Synagogue. This large, ornate synagogue offered a Reform service and was where her parents, who were not religious, occasionally worshipped. That enrollment in the gymnasium occurred after the stock market crash of 1929 and that her attendance continued during the subsequent economic depression, indicated the resilience of the Juras' business fortunes during this time. Another indication of the family's improving An early school photo taken at the Sophien standing was the hiring of a live-in housemaid. In 1928, Lyceum, August 8, 1931 Elsa Dobrunz, a young gentile woman about 18 years old, was brought into the household to keephouse and look after Ruth, who was about ten years her junior. Ruth's mother Selma was a modern woman who had become very active in the family business, so much so that help was needed for homemaking and supervision for Ruth. Elsa slept in the apartment's workroom which was used by day for cutting fabric, but which had a day-bed that could be opened at night. Ruth became very close to Elsa, who, in some respect, became the replacement for the older sister that Ruth never had. Elsa took her to and from school, to the Friedrichheim Park to play, and they both shared other joint activities. This closeness of feeling with Elsa (on the part of the whole family) was also attributable to the fact that Elsa's sister, Lotte, was similarly engaged by Ruth's Uncle Benno and Aunt Herta. It has been said in jest about the middle class Jews of pre Hitler Germany that every boy was given violin lessons, and every girl studied the piano. Whether true or not, Ruth did study the piano beginning at the age of 11, practicing on the upright in the apartment until the Elsa (at the right) looking out of the family apartment window with Ruth and Selma 5 alongside. age of 14 or 15. All told, the period of Ruth's childhood up until the attainment of power by Hitler was happy, pleasant and full of hope and bright expectations for the future. Although Hitler's Nazis became active throughout Germany shortly after the Great War, they did not come to power until January, 1933, when Hitler gained the Chancellory and almost immediately seized dictatorial control. This date marked the great watershed for German Jews, as anti-Jewish propaganda intensified and pernicious, discriminatory legislation and government policies were instituted. From 1933 onward, the lives of Germany's Jews were made miserable, as anti-Jewish policies and legislation grew ever more severe. As it was for Selma, Herman, and Ruth, 1934 Germany's Jews, so it was for the Jurases and for Ruth. One of the first acts of the Nazis in 1933 was the promotion of an economic boycott of Jewish businesses. Although not overwhelmingly subscribed by the German citizenry initially, the repetitive propaganda and social pressure soon took its toll, so that even Germans without much sympathy for Naziism came under intense pressure to avoid Jewish businesses. This policy had the intended effect on the Juras' clothing business, so that Herman was forced to wind it down by 1935. The diminution in income followed by the complete loss of livelihood was a great blow to the family, and its material well-being then suffered a steady decline. Ruth's father, Herman, having closed the business, later went to work for a local Jewish hospital on Iranienstrasse.